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Blockseer, a U.S.-based subsidiary of DMG Blockchain Solutions, recently announced a private beta version of a new Bitcoin mining pool. This particular mining pool comes with a unique feature, however.

The Blockseer Mining Pool will censor transactions from blacklisted wallets and mandate miners to undergo KYC, according to marketing materials.

New blocks generated by the Blockseer pool will only include filtered transactions. The filters will be based on the data provided by Walletscore, the companys own blockchain forensic tool, and other sources like blacklisted Bitcoin wallet addresses.

Regulators such as the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) blacklists bitcoin wallets which they have connected to criminal activity.

OFAC has already blacklisted 20 new Bitcoin addresses owned by a North Korean hacking group in May 2020, for example.

Blockseer said the company wants to comply with OFAC and make sure its mining pool also rejects transactions from blacklisted wallets. Sheldon Bennett, COO of DMG, said in a press release:

Blockseers pool brings a new compliance-focused standard to the industry, not only in the data the pool provides to its users, but also in the Bitcoin blocks it mines on the network. The pool is focused on being devoid of transaction from known nefarious wallets.

Various crypto commentators have been less than bullish on the news, claiming Blockseers news will set the wrong precedent. Riccardo Spagni, the previous lead maintainer of Monero, said, its only a matter of time till most Bitcoin mining pools are forced to do this transaction filtering.

Other experts agree. According to Juraj Bednar, Co-Founder of Hacktrophy, a situation where a mining pool decides not to include dirty transactions sets a dangerous precedent.

If the government comes in and says you cant mine the blocks that spend these UTXOs, or youll lose either a bank account, exchange account, business permit or go to jail for money laundering, most of the big miners would comply. Blockseer is just a first example, Bednar writes in his blog.

Leo Wandersleb, the founder of WalletScrutiny.com, wrote that the situation could lead to a soft fork and a new war among various mining pools.

Even though pools make Bitcoin mining more profitable for individual miners, they have been criticized for being very centralized. Because mining pools are centralized, they can be forced to comply with regulations.

Spagni said that to counter this trend, Bitcoin developers should implement new privacy features, and miners should adopt decentralized Bitcoin mining pools to keep the network free.

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New Bitcoin Mining Pool Says It Will Censor BTC Transactions - Crypto Briefing

(BigNazik/Getty Images)The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedoms legitimization of hate speech restrictions undermines American principles and foreign policy.

The United States supports a robust view of free speech and does not recognize any government ability to restrain so-called hate speech. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court has held repeatedly that government attempts to restrict hate speech as opposed to incitement to violence or defamation violate the First Amendment and are inevitably vague and arbitrary. American foreign policy should be, and for a long time has been, based on the same principles of free expression.

Why, then, is a U.S. human-rights commission promoting international censorship of hate speech and advocating for expanding the power of social-media companies to that end?

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is the legislative commission tasked with monitoring the state of religious freedom outside our shores. Last month, the USCIRF held a hearing on Combating Online Hate Speech and Disinformation Targeting Religious Communities. It is certainly despicable when any religious community is targeted by violent threats and defamatory material, and the commission is right to highlight the vicious threats that religious persons worldwide often receive, which are shocking but all too common.

But what the USCIRF says on the subject of religious freedom largely represents the American perspective to the international world, which makes its promotion of hate speech restrictions troubling.

The hearing did not just focus on violent threats, defamation, and harassment intended to suppress religious expression. Instead, it promoted empowering the largest social-media companies, in conjunction with the entire array of government and international institutions, to implement censorship and content moderation regimes under an expansively broad definition of hate speech. While the commission is bipartisan, not a single invited speaker was skeptical of the far-reaching antihate speech agenda being promoted at the United Nations. None of them spoke up in defense of robust free expression. And only one out of the nine commissioners expressed concern that hate speech moderation was used as a tool primarily to silence controversial views. While the USCIRF and the speakers themselves admitted that no clear or widely accepted definition of hate speech even exists in international law, there was no attempt made to reckon with the implications of that fact.

Neither the USCIRF commissioners nor the speakers at the hearing mentioned how the U.S., since its ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a major U.N. human-rights treaty, has objected to the use of vague speech restrictions common throughout much of the rest of the world to stifle free speech. Upon its ratification of the ICCPR, the U.S. entered a reservation against it, specifying that the ICCPR did not authorize or require any legislation or other American government action that would restrict the right of free speech and association protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Yet the hearing presented hate speech restrictions as uncontested and required by international human-rights law.

The hearing was just one event, of course. But its legitimization of hate speech restrictions comes as horrific terror attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in France have made the protection of free expression a matter of great urgency, and as international attempts to implement such restrictions are increasing. Last year, the United Nations unveiled its Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, which calls for the U.N. to strengthen partnerships with new and traditional media to address hate speech narratives and to engage social-media companies on how to support UN principles and action to address and counter hate speech, encouraging partnerships between government, industry and civil society.

Many countries that already use hate-speech laws against religious minorities would be all too happy to see the U.N.s agenda succeed. Around the same time as the agenda was unveiled, Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted an event at the U.N. General Assembly calling for greater restraints on hate speech.

Neither Pakistan nor Turkey is well-known for protecting religious freedom. But the U.S. is, and if it wants to continue to be, it must not promote speech-suppression measures abroad.

Hate speech is simply an unworkable and dangerous concept. The incantatory repetition of the word hate to stand for all manner of different kinds of speech needs to stop. Ideas should be debated and defended freely and honestly. No U.S. government body should suggest otherwise. Foreign governments that work in collaboration with social-media companies to develop content moderation regimes are only one step removed from censoring speech themselves. Congress needs to exercise its oversight authority and ensure that the USCIRF is not undermining the link between our bedrock American values and our long-standing foreign-policy aims.

See the original post:
Why Is the Federal Government Promoting Censorship Abroad? - National Review

Social media users cannot escape censorship. In an age of misinformation, Facebook and Twitter are attempting to regain control over their platforms and prevent users from spewing unreliable facts online. Removing problematic content is completely understandable, but the actions are also raising concerns.

Music streaming giant Spotify has subtly entered the discussion, and podcast creatives have every reason to be concerned about their work. Love him or hate him, Joe Rogan started this conversation, and his ongoing battle with Spotify is proving just how important it is.

Rogan is among the worlds most popular podcasters, and The Joe Rogan Experience has garnered a fiercely loyal fanbase. His fans not only respect his jokes, but they appreciate his willingness to embrace controversy. From politics to sports to neuroscience, he covers it all.

Rogan dominated podcasting independently before agreeing to a $100 million deal with Spotify earlier this year. Afterward, Spotify employees held meetings to voice their concerns about including his content on the platform. They even threatened to walk out if they could not have direct editorial oversight of the show. Rogan promised back in May there would be no censorship, and that the entire library would be available on Sept. 1.

[Review: The Queens Gambit is a gorgeous look at femininity, addiction and the 1950s]

Yet, when it first debuted on the platform, his show was missing episodes with his most controversial guests. Those included Mikhaila Peterson, Owen Benjamin and Alex Jones, among other right-wing activists, comedians and YouTubers.

Recently, fans noticed another recent episode with Jones had disappeared. If you believe what Spotify has said, then youd think that the episodes deletion was due to a technical glitch. Rogan said the same in an Instagram post that ironically was also deleted. But everything is riddled with speculation nowadays.

Even if listeners believe Rogan, the glitch reminded everyone of how serious censorships effects can be, and the desires of some Spotify employee to censor Rogan have brought up huge red flags for creators on the platform.

Rogan is not affiliated with a political party, but he is definitely a vocal commentator who leans libertarian. The JRE has never been labeled a news podcast, and Rogan is certainly not trying to win the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Instead of acting like a professional news anchor, he often presents repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories while painfully stoned. Rogan was brought to Spotify to be himself, which inevitably means making waves. An episode is sometimes like listening to a group of friends contemplate the existence of aliens while under the influence. Its concerning that Spotify employees hope to have serious editorial privileges over a show that is not even taking itself seriously (and, that utter ridiculousness is arguably responsible for podcastings shocking increase in popularity.)

[Netflix, we need to talk]

Fans are pointing out now that his recent apologies about spreading misinformation are uncharacteristic. In that recent episode with Alex Jones, Rogan met him with a healthy amount of questioning and included a fact-checker.

Trying to be more responsible is a worthwhile effort. However, Rogan should not be forced to lose his unfiltered attitude. That would be a blow to the shows creative integrity, especially given that it was never meant to be an accurate source of information.

Critics argue that someone is bound to take the nonsense that Rogans guests often spew seriously. This would require them to disregard the shows many disclaimers or labels. Some of the guests stances can absolutely be dangerous; however, context is crucial.

Listeners are not deceived into thinking they are hearing from the most sophisticated sources. The JRE could easily be classified as a comedy show. Criticizing a comedians content is easy. A good political comedian needs to push boundaries and make their audience a little uncomfortable. If Rogan cannot do that, he cannot properly do his job.

Call Her Daddys Alex Cooper is another comedy podcast host who deals with controversy over her content. Given the unclear standards for censorship across the internet, there is nothing stopping Spotify employees from going after the beloved Gluck Gluck, too. If political comedy is inappropriate for audiences, vulgar sex jokes are not immune to potential censorship, either.

Ultimately, Spotifys potential restrictive powers are not a political issue but a creative one. Due to the apps size, creators dont have many alternative platforms. Not everyone has a massive Rogan-sized following and budget that would allow them to work independently. Censorship needs to be watched to ensure the platform continues to welcome all podcasters and encourage creativity.

Read more:
Joe Rogan and other creators are in trouble if Spotify has censorship power - The Diamondback

ANKARA

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Saturday called on his nation to comply with measures taken to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

"I expect our nation to carefully comply with the measures we have put in place to combat the pandemic in this critical period," Erdogan said at a provincial congress of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in Istanbul via video conference.

"If we do not follow the rules and protect our own health, we may have difficulty bearing this burden," he added.

"Thanks to the strong infrastructure we have brought to our country, Turkey managed with the least loss the pandemic period, which many countries have difficulty dealing with," the president said.

Turkey is also taking the steps that will bring the country to its deserved place in the global political, and economic order that will be reshaped after the pandemic, Erdogan said.

Turkey is starting a new era of reforms in the economy, democracy and judiciary in the country, he said.

The country reported 3,045 new COVID-19 cases, according to the Health Ministry data released Friday, bringing the total number of cases to 407,939.

A total of 2,010 more patients recovered over the past day, bringing the tally to 348,804, while the death toll rose by 93 to reach 11,326.

The rest is here:
Erdogan calls on nation to comply with virus measures - Anadolu Agency

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Excerpt from:
The flight of the Pelikan: Erdogan's son-in-law departs - Cyprus Mail